Public leadership practices in participation : a social constructionist analysis of South African local government

Abstract

In South Africa, public participation is a constitutional mandate of local government, defined through the language of participatory governance and institutionalised through various formal structures and processes. There is general agreement across government, academia and civil society, however, that these formal efforts to engage communities in local decision-making and development often fail to achieve the intended outcomes, particularly the transformative ideals associated with the concept of participation. This raises questions regarding the roles, practices and challenges of local officials who are mandated to lead such processes. The objective of this thesis is therefore to investigate local officials’ practices in leading participatory processes in the context of South African local government. The study is framed as a social constructionist analysis of officials’ practices through the lens of public leadership. It is informed by the literature on public leadership in collaboration, as well as the literature on leadership as socially constructed and constituted in practice. In addition, the study draws on the critical participatory development literature to inform the theorisation of participation. Together, these theoretical strands foreground issues of power and structure in the analysis of officials’ practices. The study therefore set out to examine public leader practices in the context of participation, as reflected in the primary research question: How do public leader practices in a South African local government context influence participation? With a focus on local officials’ formal responsibility to lead participation, this question explores how their practices enable and/or constrain participation, as well as how those practices are socially constructed in the South African local government and informal settlement context. In answering this question, the study comprises a qualitative empirical analysis of officials’ views and experiences with participation in a South African metropolitan municipality (‘the City’). This involved semi-structured, in-depth interviews and focus groups with 59 officials across 13 City departments and structures, as well as from different levels of the organisational hierarchy. Interviews focused on how City officials understand the purpose and value of participation, how they engage communities in project and service delivery processes, and what they view as the main challenges and constraints. Although the public leadership literature recognises “collaboration” as a key feature of the public sector context, scholars tend to focus on formal inter-organisational networks and partnerships, and less on how local officials engage marginalised or vulnerable citizens and communities. The study therefore contributes to studies of public leadership by examining the engagements between local officials and informal settlement communities. The study examined officials’ work in this context through the lens of four public leader practices, which were deduced from the extant public leadership literature, namely: mobilising and convening communities and stakeholders; structuring participatory processes; weaving and navigating relationships; and framing agendas. The study found that officials perform these practices and thereby influence participation through the exercise of positional authority and structural power. This entails the power of officials to determine the space and parameters of participation, which they exercise on the basis of their formal positions. In this way, their practices are also embedded in and defined by existing City institutions, governance arrangements and policy agendas, which produce participatory spaces characterised by ‘authorised action’ and the diffusion of power. This reflects the influential role of broader structural conditions on the agency of officials in implementing participation policy. The study therefore raises questions regarding the potential for public leaders to support and realise the transformative ideals of participation, and the implications for public leadership theory.